I start and am flustered by a noise heard. Empirically, that noise _is_ fearsome; it _really_ is, not merely phenomenally or subjectively so. That _is what_ it is experienced as being. But, when I experience the noise as a _known_ thing, I find it to be innocent of harm. It is the tapping of a shade against the window, owing to movements of the wind. The experience has changed; that is, the thing experienced has changed--not that an unreality has given place to a reality, nor that some transcendental (unexperienced) Reality has changed,[47] not that truth has changed, but just and only the concrete reality experienced has changed. I now feel ashamed of my fright; and the noise as fearsome is changed to noise as a wind-curtain fact, and hence practically indifferent to my welfare. This is a change of experienced existence effected through the medium of cognition. The content of the latter experience cognitively regarded is doubtless _truer_ than the content of the earlier; but it is in no sense more real. To call it truer, moreover, must, from the empirical standpoint, mean a concrete _difference_ in actual things experienced.[48] Again, in many cases, only in retrospect is the prior experience cognitionally regarded at all. In such cases, it is only in regard to contrasted content _in_ a subsequent experience that the determination “truer” has force. Perhaps some reader may now object that as matter of fact the entire experience _is_ cognitive, but that the earlier parts of it are only imperfectly so, resulting in a phenomenon that is not real; while the latter part, being a more complete cognition, results in what is relatively, at least, more real.[49] In short, a critic may say that, when I was frightened by the noise, I _knew_ I was frightened; otherwise there would have been no experience at all. At this point, it is necessary to make a distinction so simple and yet so all-fundamental that I am afraid the reader will be inclined to pooh-pooh it away as a mere verbal distinction. But to see that to the empiricist this distinction is not verbal, but genuine, is the precondition of any understanding of him. The immediatist must, by his postulate, ask what is the fright experienced _as_. Is what is actually experienced, I-know-I-am-frightened, or I-_am_-frightened? I see absolutely no reason for claiming that the experience _must_ be described by the former phrase. In all probability (and all the empiricist logically needs is just one case of this sort) the experience is simply and just of fright-at-the-noise. Later one may (or may not) have an experience describable _as_ I-know-I-am-(or-was) and improperly or properly, frightened. But this is a different experience--that is, a different _thing_. And if the critic goes on to urge that the person “_really_” must have known that he was frightened, I can only point out that the critic is shifting the venue. He may be right, but, if so, it is only